The news announced on social media today by Christine Valada, a close friend of Ellison and his wife Susan, at her request:

Ellison's work across multiple genres—from horror to scifi to speculative fiction, across a career studded with awards from the Nebulas to the Hugos and beyond—created a highly influential bibliography for the writer, from the chilling "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" to one of the most gutwrenchingly depressing post-apocalyptic stories ever, "A Boy and His Dog." But it also lead to a career studded with controversies, mostly driven by the litany of lawsuits he pursued over his life lashing out against movies and TV shows he deemed too close to his own works, from the original Terminator to, more recently, 2011's In Time…."Main pagelink

Met him at a symposium in Buffalo in the mid-1980s. Great writer but what a nasty person. He tore a fifteen year old girl apart verbally for using the term "sci fi". He must have felt great making a young girl run out on tears. So we lose a great writer but I have mixed feelings about him from watching that sad episode years ago.

He did not suffer fools lightly, perhaps he could have been more gracious, but I suspect any smart, but diminutive, bullied Jewish kid growing up in Ohio would not easily back down when confronted by fools, critics, or the sometimes willfully ignorant.

Going to see Harlan was always an event and you would meet many other authors who came to pay their respects. Harry Turtledove came in with his three kids. They had just come from McDonalds and the youngest had a happy meal toy of one of the characters from the show Tailspin. Harlan recognized the character and started talking to the little girl. No one ever talks about this but he was very good with children, encouraging, kind, gentle and he never talked to them like they were stupid.

Between Ellison and Anthony Bourdain dying, this is dumb as I didn't know either of them but this is what it felt like when my Dad died. The world is different now, not for the better.